Cover

Title Page, About the Series, Copyright

Contents

Chapter 1. Bureaucratic Socialization

Though it has more than four letters, “bureaucrat” is a bad word.1 It evokes Kafkaesque
paperwork and government workers who are out of touch, rule-obsessed,
and heartless. Despite the word’s cultural resonance, and its usefulness as a rhetorical
device (Safire 1978), the myth bears little resemblance to reality: public-sector...

Chapter 2. Dispositions and Institutions

In his study of police officer development, Van Maanen (1974, 84) quotes a police
chief as saying, “The day the new recruit walks through the doors of the police
academy he leaves society behind him to enter a profession that does more than
give him a job, it defines who he is. For all the years he remains, closed into the...

Chapter 3. The Long View: How Veteran Workers See Their Worlds

As they enter bureaucracies, new public workers meet peers, are told how to think
and act by instructors, and begin their work. Various ethnographic studies suggest
that this process is formative for entrants (Conti 2009; Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert
1998; Macvean and Cox 2012; Rubinstein 1973; Wanous 1992). For example...

Chapter 4. Entry: An In-Depth Account

A group of welfare caseworker trainees sat nervously on the first day of training.
We talked quietly among ourselves and took in the sights and sounds around us.
The state office building in which we sat was modern, with clean carpeted hallways
and inspirational posters about the benefits of work. Eventually two trainers...

Chapter 5. In the Service of Others? Motivation, Altruism, and Egoism

After he had worked for two years inside the welfare department, I asked Terrell
what was driving him to stay in his job. Without missing a beat he responded, “I
would say that it really is just to have a job and have income come in. You know
what really? I just go to work and do what I’m guided to do to get through the day...

Chapter 6. Bureaucratic Identity: Rules and Loyalty

After two years on the force, Phillip, a white police officer who had previously
served in the armed forces, described his approach to policing: “You gotta have a
dual personality like you’ll know when the good, honest, hardworking people
you’re dealing with, and I treat them like a good, honest person should be treated...

Chapter 7. Attitudes: Social Problems, Race, and Deservingness

The first time that we spoke, Mary talked at length about other caseworkers whom
she had observed.
What I have seen is some of the [caseworkers] are very biased in their thinking.
. . . And because of their way of thinking they treat people kind of bad.
But you have other workers who the clients are so many, and the caseload...

Chapter 8. Change and Continuity at Government’s Front Lines

Bureaucrats play an essential role in public policymaking because they decide what
rules mean and how they are applied in practice. As they make choices about how
to respond to people and situations, their behavior follows a logic of appropriateness—they
think about who they are as members of an organization, what type of situation...

Appendix A. Research Design

To examine the diverging expectations set forth in Chapters 1 and 2, this book
outlines the findings from a comparative case study of entering police officers and
welfare caseworkers. These two cases were selected because they have much in
common but also differ in important ways. This section discusses the similarities...

Appendix B. Recruitment and Job Requirements

Chapter 4 provides an in-depth
portrait of the experiences that these two sets of
workers had when they entered their organizations. Although the first day of training
was an important milestone for newcomers, it is important to describe the recruitment
tactics used by each of these organizations as well as the job requirements
that entrants had to meet...

Appendix C. Measurement and Analysis

To analyze entry, Chapters 5 to 7 rely on bivariate (welfare) and multivariate
(police) statistical analysis of entrants’ responses to survey questions. Since the
two cases differ, and the theorized influences on entrants vary depending on where
they were in their development, the book uses a variety of models (discussed...

Index

Acknowledgments

Series Title: American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public LawSeries Editor Byline: Series Editors: Richard Valelly, Pamela Brandwein, Marie Gottschalk, Christopher Howard
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